


Starship Churchill: Mistakes

by m_k



Series: Starship Churchill [7]
Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Action/Adventure, Old Age, Romulans, Second Chances, Starfleet, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 17:01:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28816755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/m_k/pseuds/m_k
Summary: An elderly Romulan woman, hoping for a second chance in life, tricks Captain T'Lon into revealing the location of the Guardian of Forever.
Series: Starship Churchill [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2037238
Kudos: 2





	1. My Name is Tama

So far, this year had been filled with nothing but calamities and mistakes. Perhaps the difficulty of my captaincy of the Churchill would even out over time. The job was, as the humans say, more than I had bargained for.

Our current mission was to convey a pallet of dinatrium from Kavaria to a dismal world called IX Clarus where final processing is done. Dinatrium, like dilithium, is one of the “shadow” elements on the periodic table which are bound to a matrix of negative energy. It is utilized in the power sources of subspace relays, to name one example. Apparently, there was a severe shortage in the Federation. Hence, the assignment.

Despite my science officer having taken care of all the details, the stuff was dangerous enough that only I was allowed to sign for it, and even then, only in person.

Once that happened, the pallet was to be transported by space elevator to an orbital way station. From there, it would be physically onloaded into the Churchill’s cargo hold. Using the transporter was simply not possible due to the element’s unstable nature. In other words, it would explode.

“Um, Captain?”

Commander Simonson’s hesitancy told me I was not going to like the next sentence. I raised a brow expectantly.

“There is an elderly Romulan lady outside the office who wishes to speak to you.”

I had been born on Romulus, but was then separated from my parents when only five years old. My mind raced, trying to determine who this lady might be. My mother? But she would be only eighty or so years old; to Simonson’s human eyes she would appear middle-aged, not elderly. I pushed aside such troubling suspicions and tried to meet the lady without preconceptions.

The elderly woman had short silver hair, a slightly bent posture, and walked with an ornate cane made of black wood. She wore a simple, slightly frayed dress and chukka boots. Not at all dressed like a Romulan, I thought.

“My name is Tama,” she said, lowering her head slightly.

“I am Captain Sovak T’Lon of the Federation starship Churchill,” I said evenly.

“I’m pleased to meet a fellow Romulan so far from home,” she said, smiling.

How did she know? There were a hundred Vulcans for every Romulan in Starfleet, and it certainly wasn’t something I advertised. Perhaps Simonson had revealed it, despite it not being relevant.

I asked how I could help her; she asked for passage aboard the Churchill to IX Clarus.

“Well, the Churchill isn’t a passenger ship,” I replied. “It’s a Federation starship. It’s not my place to grant passage.”

“But you’re the captain,” she replied. “My daughter lives on IX Clarus. She can’t afford to leave—the Ferengi don’t pay her enough. And I can’t afford to travel.”

“Yes, but, you see, we’re transporting dinatrium. It’s extremely dangerous.”

The Romulan, looking fatigued, met my eyes. “I’m one hundred and seventy eight years old, Captain T’Lon. The slice of the pie left to me is exceedingly small and getting smaller every day. I’ll accept the risk.”

“Ms. Tama,” I explained, “my ship is a scout class ship. That means, it’s quite small. There’s no room for you.”

“I’m familiar with scout class ships,” she said. “I’ll sleep in the sickbay. If there’s no room there, I’ll sleep on a cot in the cargo hold. If there’s no cot, I’ll sleep on a pallet.”

I sighed heavily. The lady would not take no for an answer.

I said, “The cargo hold will be full of highly dangerous material. I’m sorry, I can’t take you. It’s against the rules.”

The elderly Romulan shut her lids tightly and struggled to speak.

“I just—I wanted to hug my daughter…one last….”

She exhaled deeply and collapsed into my arms, unconscious. I called for a beam-up and Doctor Li’s assistants carried the small and frail woman to sickbay, leaving me to stand there, regarding the woman’s surprisingly heavy walking stick. The carved Romulan letters arranged vertically spelled out _Qiuu mnek’nra_ , an old aphorism meaning “Everyone is good.”

I sighed.

————————

Ensign Yerushalmi appeared bewildered.

“Me?”

“You’re the least senior officer and the newest aboard,” I stated.

“Damn, I have to give up my quarters?”

“It’s not a request.”

“But—”

“I’m not going to make that old lady sleep on a cot. Lieutenant C’Mal has offered to share her quarters with you until we reach IX Clarus.”

“Oh, that sounds like fun,” Yerushalmi noted with a flat affect.

“You’re dismissed,” I said coldly.

After the delicate transfer of the pallet of dinatrium to the cargo hold, the Churchill warped away from Kavaria and I visited the elder Romulan in her borrowed room. She was wistfully starring out her starboard window at the passing stars.

“Are you comfortable?” I asked.

“I haven’t been comfortable since I was nine years old,” she replied. I suppose the tilt of my head caused her to add, “That’s a joke.” She turned and sat stiffly on Yerushalmi’s bunk, resting her cane beside her.

I apologized, “I’m sorry about the sudden departure. Anything you need, the replicator can provide. Food…clothes…even books.”

“And medicine,” she added. “Your kind Doctor Li wrote me a prescription.”

I nodded; there was a brief, uncomfortable silence, during which she studied me serenely.

“Thank you,” she finally said, then added, “I was probably just a bit older than you when I left Romulus.”

“Why did you leave?” I asked. I had wondered how she came to be in Federation space, at the opposite end of the Alpha Quadrant from Romulus.

She closed her eyes and smiled. “I fell in love with, and married, a Starfleet officer. A captain, like you.”

“Would that not have been highly unusual for that time period?” I asked, surprised.

“Of course,” she replied, nodding. “Romulans back then were the unknown enemy, at least as far as the Federation were concerned. But when she rescued me, we bonded instantly. She was the love of my life, and I lost her soon after.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “What happened?”

“Starfleet took away her command and her ship…probably because of me. It broke her. She grew resentful and distant, and said it was a mistake to give up her captaincy. Not that she had a choice. Life was hard for us then. We were forbidden from traveling, from doing much of anything. I left my love and tried to make it back to Romulus…that was a mistake. And when I finally returned to her, she was dead. I’ve been alone ever since.”

“That sounds very difficult,” I commiserated.

“All I have left in this universe is my daughter. I want to see her before I die. It’s been four decades.”

“Ms. Tama,” I said, “I hope you realize that I won’t be able to offer you a return trip.”

“I’ll tell you a secret,” she whispered, weakly. “I doubt I’ll survive that long. It is said that we Romulans live slowly, but die quickly.”

I finished my shift, ate dinner in the mess hall, and returned to my room where I sat in bed reading a murder mystery about a Vulcan detective. But Tama remained in my thoughts. Her story was a sad one. Still, she had more family than I had.


	2. Make Some Mistakes

The next evening, Tama cooked me a meal using replicated ingredients, and brought the dishes to my quarters.

“I usually char the protein,” she said. “But I was afraid of setting off a fire alarm.”

“It’s delicious…and much appreciated,” I replied.

I could not help but to study her long, thin fingers and delicate, aged hands. When she appeared to be falling asleep, I tried to question her about her past.

“You said your wife was a Starfleet captain, and that she lost her captaincy. The fact that she married a Romulan is distinctive, yet I was unable to find a matching person in the Starfleet database.”

She replied matter-of-factly: “You won’t find a reference to her, Captain T’Lon, because my wife became a Starfleet secret. That is the reason why we couldn’t travel. Why we had to maintain a low profile. You wouldn’t believe the secrets that are out there, and the people who remain silent because of orders and duty. People who are erased by secrecy, just like my wife was.”

I knew exactly what she was saying. “You are not the only one to have been affected by Starfleet’s propensity to bury unpleasant things that don’t fit their narrative. Their solution too often is to mark it secret and swear everyone to silence.”

Just then, Commander Simonson comm’d me and reported: “We appear to be passing through the super-attenuated remnant of a stellar nova. The moving field lines are causing the negative energy potential of the dinatrium to fluctuate more than I would like.”

“Can’t we just put a level one force field around this stuff?” I suggested.

“Even a stationary energy field will put pressure on it, Captain. It’s a crystal. I suggest we sweep around the rest of the remnant. It will add half a day to travel time.”

“Very well, alter course to avoid the remnant,” I said.

“Understood,” replied Simonson.

Tama seemed to enjoy listening to this interaction. She brightened and smiled, asking, “Do you enjoy being a starship captain?”

“Yes, of course. Although I sometimes tire of the drama involved with having a small crew. But that’s probably the Vulcan in me talking.”

“What plans do you have for the future?” she asked.

“The future?”

“You’re still very young. You have your whole life ahead of you. Don’t get suckered into thinking Starfleet is your life. It’s just a job. Aren’t you curious about your native culture—the culture on Romulus? About your parents? About all the worlds Starfleet doesn’t find strategically valuable or interesting? They are worth visiting. You need to spread your wings, try new things. Make some mistakes.”

Being told to “make some mistakes” by someone whose life seemed to be nothing but an accumulation of regrets felt uncomfortable. I’m sure I frowned.

She added, “But then again, a young person’s point of view is very different from an old person’s, such as mine.”

She quickly packed up her dishes and bid me goodnight.

————————

The next day, while heading to the bridge, I received a comm from Simonson about an emergency situation in the cargo hold. I jogged to the back of the ship and found the cargo door open. C’Mal and the others were standing, hands on their weapons, appearing distressed. Simonson was pacing, her brow knitted.

What I saw beyond them, I did not expect: Tama, the elderly Romulan, standing by the pallet of dinatrium, leaning on her cane with one hand, a phaser in her other hand touching the stacked canisters of the unstable element.

“What’s happening here?” I asked.

Simonson was sweating. “She somehow got ahold of a phaser. And now she’s asking to speak to you.”

I glanced at the old woman, whose eyes were locked on me. I turned my back to her and whispered to Simonson, “I realize that she’s standing next to the dinatrium, but can we just beam her out? Isolate her with a force field?”

“There’s nothing wrong with my hearing, Captain,” Tama said, a hard edge to her voice I had not heard until then.

Simonson glanced at her, then met my eyes and shook her head.

I turned to the woman holding a phaser on enough dinatrium to vaporize us many times over and peered at her. She was unsteady and her face appeared pale, despite its steely expression.

“You’re not looking so good, Tama,” I said. “Maybe we can contact your daughter via subspace so you can talk to her. Do you want that?”

“I have no daughter, T’Lon,” she stated. “No daughter, no wife, no history, no future. That’s what I’m here to fix.”

“Fix…how?” I asked, genuinely puzzled.

“It is time,” she replied, “for you and me to have a talk. Alone.”

Simonson objected, “I’m not going to leave, Sovak.”

C’Mal, cradling her phaser rifle, added, “Me neither.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “She wants to talk. We’ll talk.” I added, “That’s an order.”

The others retreated into the corridor and I closed the door behind them, trying to project some confidence as I did so. The Romulan woman regarded me steadily. Was the sympathetic elder I thought I had grown to know these last few days a lie?

“What is the purpose of all this?” I demanded.

“To meet you.”

“Why?”

“The Romulan incursion. Remember? That was the last time anyone ever saw the Guardian of Forever. I think you know where it is.”

I remained silent.

The Guardian was a very ancient artifact designed, it is conjectured, to be a gateway for research into the past and the future. But the potential to destroy entire histories led it to banish itself from existence.

I had been sworn to secrecy about it.

She continued: “T’Lon, I am a woman of means. The company which mined this dinatrium belongs to me. I have many connections. I know things. The Romulans returned to that world…Omega Sagitarii III. The Guardian wasn’t there. You see, if you don’t know where it is, then no one knows. But I think you do.”

“Where is all this going?” I asked.

“I already told you. Didn't you listen? My wife Jaymie and I came to this universe by accident. Starfleet took away our Constitution class vessel and made us adopt new lives. Our ship was gutted, refitted, and rechristened as the U.S.S. Columbia.”

“That all happened over a century ago,” I said. 

Tama turned the phaser on me and adjusted the setting, but to what I could not determine. Her washed-out eyes hardly blinked. “Pray,” she said, “that you don’t end up like me. A frayed loose end, winding through space like a ribbon carried by the wind.” Her eyes narrowed. “If there is a key to finding the Guardian, that key is you. It’s simple logic.”

“Even if I could,” I responded candidly, “I’d have to be insane to call upon the Guardian and allow you to rewrite history.”

She argued, “We weren’t even supposed to be a part of your history. We arrived here because of a warp accident.”

“But you’re part of it now," I replied. "Who knows what difference one less Constitution class starship would make to history. The Federation might not even still be around at this point. And the effects will continue into the future. You simply can’t threaten me and expect me to do something so heinous.”

Tama approached to within several steps. She then fired the phaser and, blindsided and paralyzed, I fell to my knees. Hardly able to control my movements, I collapsed, my limbs throbbing with pins and needles.

“Lowest setting,” I croaked, trying to stir. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

She stepped closer and, adjusting the setting again, leveled the weapon at me. 


	3. Swept into the Distance

That was my very first time being hit by phaser fire, and, even at the lowest setting, the pain was incapacitating. I flailed, cried out, and finally gave up trying to get up. Opening my eyes, I saw that Tama had stepped closer still, and was aiming the phaser squarely at my chest.

We stared at each other for quite a while, until she finally tossed the deadly weapon away from herself. It clattered on the floor beside me. She had concluded, apparently, that the phaser wasn’t going to convince me.

“I can’t help you up,” she kvetched, “I can barely stand myself.”

“Oh, I’m good,” I said, unable to move.

“I…would say I’m sorry…if that were true. But this is my last chance to control my destiny, and to fix my life. Nothing is hanging in the balance at this point but my happiness. I’m not pulling any strings. Please, Sovak T’Lon, call the Guardian.”

I complained, “Guardian? I told you it doesn’t work like that.”

A rich and vibrant voice filled the cargo bay, a voice I had heard before on that distant world called Omega Sagitarii III.

It said, “I am here.”

The cargo bay, the pallet of dinatrium, the whole damn starship…faded. The two of us were now on the twilight surface of some moon, littered with rocks and dust. Above, a glittering sea of white stars filled the sky to the horizon. Amid all this, a barred spiral galaxy filled the dome of the sky. I was certain that the galaxy was the Milky Way, although I had of course never seen it from this angle.

With effort, I sat upright and looked around. The Guardian of Forever, anchored in the grey uneven ground, appeared blocky and solid. The distant starry horizon was visible through the middle of its portal.

“You actually answered…,” I said, amazed but baffled.

The four meter tall ring pulsed with energy as the Guardian spoke: “I answer when I am called, and needed. You are visiting the airless moon where I abide, but you are also still aboard your vessel. You exist in both places.”

“But how did you know?” I suspected that I might be unconscious or hallucinating after the phaser trauma, and wondered whether to take this illusion seriously or not.

“There exists in the universe a point, a privileged spot from where the universe as a whole is revealed.* That is where I exist, and where you may find me, wherever you may be,” it explained cryptically.

That was good enough for me.

Tama had begun shuffling toward the gateway. I pushed myself to my feet and struggled to follow. She reached the toroidal structure and eagerly placed her hands on the smooth surface.

“It’s warm,” she said, before asking the Guardian, “Is there a way? Can you return me to the other universe? I have the revised navigational settings that will prevent our coming to this universe.”

“Such a trip is possible. Behold….”

I then saw Tama as she must have looked one hundred plus years ago. She was quite beautiful, regal even, with long flowing copper-colored hair and caring, attentive eyes. But it was a hologram, standing before a dedication tree. Such trees are planted on high hills overlooking cities or seas. The trees carry a chip inside that transmits the story of a deceased loved one, as well as the image.

“What does this mean?” she demanded.

“You wife resigned her commission when you married. Not long afterward, you died of Tarsic Fever. And soon after that, your wife died in the Mintaka revolt.”

“No,” Tama cried, pleadingly. “I…I can travel farther back.”

The Guardian’s portal darkened. “Then you will perish in the black hole before your wife can rescue you. Farther still and you will never encounter her at all.”

Tama was breathing heavily, and was beginning to look truly aged, fatigued, and brittle. She shook her head, as if to dispel this new truth.

“Are you saying that I’m already living in my own best reality?” she cried. “No, I can go back to right after we arrived in this universe and settled on Ghana IV. I can…tell myself not to try to return to Romulus, to remain with Jaymie.”

I grabbed her arms tightly to prevent her from moving and said, “I can’t let you do that. You’d change history.”

She cried out in pain and grasped desperately at her walking stick, trying to prop herself up. I held her as steady as possible.

The Guardian said, “She has extended her life with the drug Rimaxon, but her time has come to an end. She will expire in minutes.”

“You have to go through the gateway for me,” she begged me in a fading, diminished voice. “Tell her not to leave for Romulus. Tell her to stay with Jaymie.”

I held her, supporting her. Would this be me some day, far down the line? Regretful, Remiss. A ribbon fluttering in the wind, carried high into the air and swept into the distance, an untethered filament, pushed onward until it became nothing.

“All right,” I told her. “I’ll do that for you.”

If a Vulcan ever tells you they are incapable of lying, that Vulcan is lying.

She clubbed me on the temple with her cane, which I now realized made a substantial weapon. Before I could even recover my footing, she cracked the stick into two pieces over my head and I went down, stunned and nearly unconscious.

I heard her say, “Show me just after we settled on Ghana IV.”

“Behold…,” the Guardian answered.

I rocked myself to my feet and saw she was gone. Thin green blood was pouring from a wound on my head; I tried to wipe it out of my eyes.

“Did she change history?” I asked.

The pulsing energy of the ring lit the dim landscape as the Guardian reported, “Despite expiring soon after passing through, she changed what was, and what is, and what will be.”

“Can I change it back?”

“Not without multiplying the changes manyfold.”

I groaned. “What did she change? No, don’t tell me. It’s better I don’t know. Oh…my head.”

The blood kept steaming through my short hair and into my eyes. I began to cry, astonished at my own stupidity and incompetence. _Coshed by a hundred and eighty year old woman,_ I marveled. _Can’t wait to write that in my report._

“Will my crew even remember Tama?” I asked.

“No. Your paths never met. But you will remember. She was correct about you being the key to calling upon the Guardian of Forever. Do not abuse that key.”

“Then, I’ll see you again?” I asked.

The Guardian was already fading, dissipating along with the intense stardust of the Magellanic galaxy and the great wheel of the Milky Way.

“We will meet once more,” said the Guardian with certainty. “You will know when to call upon me.” 

————————

“Your skull is fractured and you have a concussion,” Doctor Li said, peering at the scanner. “I can mend the bone, but you’ll need to stay in bed for a few days to allow your brain to heal itself. This is concerning, Captain.”

“What’s concerning is my stupidity,” I confessed. “I’ve made so many mistakes. And they just keep coming.”

Li chuckled.

“What is so amusing?” I asked, annoyed as hell.

“Well, I was about to say, ‘You’re human, you’re allowed to make mistakes,’ but obviously that doesn’t apply.”

I frowned. “It never applies when the mistakes can be deadly. I can’t be so foolish in the future. I can’t be.”

Years later I gained security access to the file on the Romulan woman and her Starfleet wife. She never departed for Romulus; they were together until the human died. It occurred to me that a version of her might still be out there somewhere—very elderly, very good at wielding a cane as a weapon. I resisted the urge to dig further. That story was over, that book was closed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a sequel to the Star Trek story [Tameness of the Wolf](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28596606/chapters/70085790).
> 
> The story of how Sovak T'Lon first encountered the Guardian of Forever is [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28321023/chapters/69391293).
> 
> *It appears the Guardian borrowed this exact phrasing from _The Morning of the Magicians_ , by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, 1963.


End file.
